Quotes About Enlightenment

On our plane knowledge and ignorance are the immemorial adversaries.

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstasies of learning; for I come from heights that no bird ever reached in its flight, I know abysses into which no foot ever strayed.

Freedom can occur only through education.

The key to education is the experience of beauty.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

Qui augmente sa connaissance augmente son ignorance.

Je mehr man schon weiß, je mehr hat man noch zu lernen. Mit dem Wissen nimmt das Nichtwissen in gleichem Grade zu, oder vielmehr das Wissen des Nichtwissens.

The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.

As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

The very idea of higher states of consciousness is absurd. Comparing one state of consciousness to another and saying one is "higher" and the other is "mundane" is like eating a banana and complaining it's not a very good apple.

Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay Buddha forever.

In order to deal with the fear of annihilation you have to face annihilation again and again and again. It's not enough just to understand this intellectually. It's not enough just to read about this. You need to watch yourself being annihilated right now. If you can manage to sit quietly as you disappear from existence moment by moment, then you can see it's really nothing to be afraid of. You gotta meditate. Nobody likes to hear that. But it's true.

People imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful, And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe- but usually no one else notices.

Buddhas do not make intentional efforts for this to happen," he says; "it happens when they are activated by the moment of the present." You get it when you allow the universe to act through you without hindering what it wants with your own petty needs and wishes.

He had the saffron robes, the shaved head, and that mellow spiritual way of talking that let you know here was a guy who had truly achieved a rare state of inner with-it-ness.

Practicing zazen is like gradually (or maybe not so gradually) getting your sight back.

The Buddha was not full of shit when he said the cause of suffering could be uprooted and that you can put an end to it once and for all. There is a way out of this mess humanity has found itself in. It's just that the answer to the cause of suffering — and the way to end it — are nothing at all like what you think they are or imagine they should be.

Often statues depicting the Buddha's moment of enlightenment show him touching the ground. This symbolizes that his enlightened state included a firm grounding in this reality instead of serving as an escape from it.

In conclusion, polishing a stone really does transform it into a mirror. If stones couldn't become mirrors, regular people couldn't become Buddhas. If we hate stones for being hunks of dirt, you might as well hate people for being hunks of dirt. If people have minds, stones must also have minds. Who can notice that there are mirrors in which stones are reflected? Who can notice that there are mirrors in which mirrors are reflected?

Rather than revering supposedly special people for being Buddhas, we should revere the Buddha present in all people, whenever and wherever it manifests. D?gen talks about learning from anyone, no matter what their station in life, if that person says or does something wise.